Unaddressed mistakes: Overbilled PESCO customers not facilitated

Consumer received incorrect bills for three months charging him 1,113 extra power units.

PESHAWAR:

The Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) has allegedly been incorrectly calculating power bills of customers, charging them more than the amount due for the electricity they consumed.

This has also led to many of them becoming tangled in a vicious cycle visiting Pesco offices repeatedly to rectify their bills. Recurring instructions by the Pesco chief to the officials to develop a reliable system of assessing bills has also been futile as people have still found no respite.

Nasir Khan is a resident of Kotla Mohsin Khan who has become a victim this over-billing and as a result has had to make several visits to the Pesco office. Khan has a three-member family whose average power consumption, as shown correctly in the bills of January-July 2012 is 100-150 units per month.

However, in the month of August his meter readings were recorded as 8,583 units against the actual reading of 7,469 units, 1113 extra. Khan, being a government servant, felt a great burden when he saw a big difference in what he thought he would pay and what he was billed. When he went to Pesco’s Gulberg sub-division office, instead of accepting the mistake, the official he spoke to offered Khan to pay the bill in installments of Rs1,500 per month.

The bill Khan received in September was incorrect as it incorporated extra dues from the previous month even though Khan had paid last month’s installment. Khan received an incorrect bill in the month of October as well. He decided to lodge a complaint against Pesco at the office of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Electric Inspector, a body meant to address ‘wrong and advance meter reading of power bills’. Khan visited the electric inspector for four consecutive days just to get his application processed.

Eventually, he was asked to make six copies of his application and submit them along with written instructions from Electric Inspector Muhammad Ismail Khan to various offices in the Pesco Cantonment Division including the Gulberg sub-division office to correct the bill which charged him for 1,113 extra power units.

Like many others in this situation, Khan still awaiting response from Pesco officials for the rectification of a mistake he did not make but is being asked to pay for.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 13^th, 2012.